RickHorowitzhttp://rickhorowitz.com
Tue, 07 Mar 2017 19:22:05 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.75778595A Bloodless, Bloody Couphttp://rickhorowitz.com/2017/01/29/a-bloodless-bloody-coup/
http://rickhorowitz.com/2017/01/29/a-bloodless-bloody-coup/#respondSun, 29 Jan 2017 22:06:32 +0000http://rickhorowitz.com/?p=485Imagine you were living in the early 1930s in Germany. You saw what was happening with a hardcore right-wing group that used hate, and even sometimes violence, to achieve its political goals. There were elections coming. But you decided not to vote.

It just wasn’t your thing.

Plus, you “knew” the rabble-rousing right-wingers were just so unlikely to win, your vote didn’t matter. If you followed the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, you might know about it—and know that technically, you would have been right: your vote wasn’t needed. The right-wingers did not win the election. But…

But we’re talking about Germany. And while Germany was a democratic republic—just as the United States is—there was a minor difference. Germany’s government was parliamentary.

Basically, Hitler didn’t win those [elections] outright. In the German system nobody won outright. It was always going to be a coalition. But what he did do was, he got a huge minority of the vote, more than any other parties by a million miles. It was a landslide victory in that sense.

And while the right-wing Nazis only won 30 percent of the vote, increasing that to 37 percent in a run-off, this essentially drove the “winning” party, led by World War I hero Hindenberg, to form an alliance with them. The rest of what happened is perhaps no longer well-known history, but the bottom line is that Hitler initially used primarily completely legal means to raise himself to the point where he was able to seize power. The last completely legal aspect was the 1933 vote:

In the last parliamentary elections of the Weimar Republic, in March 1933, the Nazis polled 44% of the vote – not enough for a majority but enough to squash any future political resistance.

It is well worth pointing out here that Hitler did not even care for his own supporters, the Nazis, whom he used to gain power. Afterwards, he turned on them, having 5,000 of them murdered when he was done with them.

Hitler’s initial rise to power until then had been, for the most part, a bloodless coup. Appeasement and capitulation—”waiting to see,” I guess, is how they would have put it, because they believed they could control him—caused those in power to try to cozy up to Hitler. To ride his coattails, as it were. And, after all, Hitler was going to make Germany great again.

Until perhaps the Night of the Long Knives, there was a chance to stop Hitler. The problem was that not enough people understood what was happening.

At a local level in time people think things are fine, then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this it is hard to see happening and hard to understand. To historians later it all makes sense and we see clearly how one thing led to another.

Perhaps a larger number of people had some understanding—and tried to stop it—but their numbers were too small, and too many thought their complaints overblown. And, of course, eventually most of them were silenced. The initial rise to power was thus, as I said, largely bloodless, until it wasn’t.

There is, of course, no comparison between 1930s Germany and the United States of America in 2016-2017. Nobody campaigned on a platform of hate, pandering to those who wanted someone other than themselves to blame for what was happening to them economically. Nobody blamed the Jews, Mexicans, or Muslims. And nobody lied to their supporters in order to gain their support, and then immediately began backtracking on the most outrageous of the promises upon obtaining power. There has been—at least as of this writing—no Night of Long Knives. Republicans who initially stood against this electoral college’s winning candidate for the Presidency, speaking out against his most outrageous ideas, haven’t started to cozy u—well, okay. You know everything I just said is bullshit: those things did, indeed, happen. My own rendition was in the category of alternative facts. Maybe there’s a slight similarity, after all.

But this coup has been completely bloodless. Paul Ryan—who raised hackles with his opposition to Trump—is still alive, and in power. The Constitution still stands. Nobody is illegally rounding anyone up, illegally holding them in airports, illegally refusing them access to lawyers. Unless you count this:

The lawyers said they had not been allowed to meet with their clients. “Who is the person we need to talk to?” one of the lawyers, Mark Doss, a supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project, asked a border agent. “Call Mr. Trump,” said the agent, who declined to identify himself.

Well, but even though Trump’s orders regarding immigrants were signed on International Holocaust Memorial Day—because apparently, he hasn’t forgotten, even if everyone else has—it is different from Nazi Germany: these people aren’t Jews. And nobody is being literally gassed to death; what you see now, if you see at all, is merely gaslighting. And judges are still forcing them to follow the law, and Trump’s Troops might be complying. Maybe.

And me? I’m clearly over-reacting. There are no parallels here to anything anyone has ever seen before. Let’s just give the guy a chance. As long as everything is done completely legally, let’s wait and see.

And you? You just carry on. Let things run their course. Don’t stand against it. Stop resisting—don’t even whisper it. Most importantly, keep on not being politically involved; above all else, don’t vote.

Maybe that way, this time, it really will be a completely bloodless coup.

However, I’ve been blogging a lot more frequently there these days. Although by day I am a not-so-mild-mannered criminal defense attorney, I find that my photography provides a much-needed respite, and creative outlet, to help keep me sane.

For that reason, I recently took the added step of renting space on a month-to-month basis to use as a studio. Most of the work I do is actually landscape photography, but I also shoot boudoir, nudes, and even occasionally “regular” portraits.

Stop by and check out the website, and maybe leave a comment, or two, or more, about my work!

]]>http://rickhorowitz.com/2014/10/27/rickhorowitzphotography/feed/041Malshandir, for Butthurthttp://rickhorowitz.com/2013/07/27/malshandir-for-butthurt/
http://rickhorowitz.com/2013/07/27/malshandir-for-butthurt/#respondSun, 28 Jul 2013 04:15:05 +0000http://rickhorowitz.com/?p=433Recently, a controversy broke out over the name “Malshandir.”

I’d have never known anything about it, but a friend of mine, Ken White over at Popehat,wrote about it. He mentioned on another website that he wanted a Photoshop image created with a tube of a substance called “Malshandir Butthurt Cream,” for “when your ass really hurts.”

Well, I greatly enjoy the opportunity to play around with Photoshop, and the idea of a parody medication ad just seemed like it would be too much fun.

So, without further ado….

If you’ve got your head up your ass, Malshandir may help. Click image to view at full size.
]]>http://rickhorowitz.com/2013/07/27/malshandir-for-butthurt/feed/0433I Unbroke My Sitehttp://rickhorowitz.com/2010/12/13/i-unbroke-my-site/
http://rickhorowitz.com/2010/12/13/i-unbroke-my-site/#respondTue, 14 Dec 2010 01:42:54 +0000http://rickhorowitz.com/?p=416This is a really major irritation. I’ve no idea how this happened, but apparently the Featured Content Carousel plug-in became activated on my website. I don’t know if I was experimenting with something and didn’t realize what I’d done, or if it was some theme I tried out briefly and then deleted, or what.

At any rate, the Featured Content Carousel deactivated the slide-box on my main page, making me think it was broken. I decided that this had happened because of the upgrade to WordPress 3.0 and decided I needed a new 3.0-compatible theme. So I looked and looked — the theme I originally tweaked (Revolution Office) apparently no longer exists — and found something called Work Place from Press75.com looked the closest to my theme.

Bought it; installed it; realized it was never going to work without major tweaking. Complete waste of $75!

A little more poking around on the web and I discovered that the Revolution Office theme on which I based my theme stops working correctly if the Featured Content Carousel is installed and activated.

Deactivated the plug-in. Problem solved.

I’m still out $75.

]]>http://rickhorowitz.com/2010/12/13/i-unbroke-my-site/feed/0416I Broke My Sitehttp://rickhorowitz.com/2010/11/20/i-broke-my-site/
http://rickhorowitz.com/2010/11/20/i-broke-my-site/#respondSun, 21 Nov 2010 01:05:56 +0000http://rickhorowitz.com/?p=410Well, it looks like I broke RickHorowitz — my website, anyway. At least, I broke the “slideshow” function at the top of the page.

You’re probably tired of hearing me say this (you who might have found this blog via some Google search and then started reading several of the articles, even though the site appears to be almost dead), but I haven’t blogged here in awhile.

The big problem boils down to this: I’m a lawyer. I don’t know why, but I’ve been concerned about maintaining a “personal” blog, like this one. I worry that people — potential clients and clients, to be exact — will react to things I say on my personal blog, even though the main page (as the site is currently constructed; this may change) says, under the heading “Letting My Hair Down”:

This site is where I let my hair down. Everyone is different in private life versus professional life; everyone is entitled to both. Don’t judge my professionalism or ability as an attorney by what you might see on this site. This site is meant to allow me some self- expression and enjoyment that isn’t necessarily related to what I do as a criminal defense lawyer.

I do, however, have other interests (particularly “writing”) and I do want a place where I can “play” and “experiment” and write about things that have nothing to do with the law. To do what I want to do, I think I need to pay more attention to this site. (And, now that I broke it, I might have to actually re-design it.)

So I’m just going to have to ask people — potential clients and clients, to be exact — to remember that, as I said above (and on the current main page), people’s private lives and professional lives are different. What I write here may, or may not, tell you much about me. What it probably won’t do is give you a very good idea of what kind of lawyer I am; it probably won’t tell you if I’m the attorney who could best handle your case.

On the other hand, I guess I have no control over how people make their decisions.

I can only be myself. And hope for the best.

]]>http://rickhorowitz.com/2010/11/20/i-broke-my-site/feed/0410Personal Blogginghttp://rickhorowitz.com/2010/03/05/personal-blogging/
http://rickhorowitz.com/2010/03/05/personal-blogging/#respondFri, 05 Mar 2010 17:38:39 +0000http://rickhorowitz.com/?p=402This blog doesn’t get updated much. The effect shows in the non-readership and I’m not really terribly concerned about that. This blog was originally created with the intent that it would be a “personal” blog, but blogging about my personal life seems to me problematic.

At first, I thought it would be a great idea to have a personal blog. After all, I’ve kept journals off and on for years. My journals don’t really record all that much in the way of deeply personal things; someone finding them would probably just be bored with the reading. Much of it pertains to ideas and thoughts that are best labeled “philosophical.”

No surprise there, as I majored in philosophy.

The point is that my journals, while personal, aren’t deeply revealing (except insofar as they reveal the “philosophical” things I consider). Sometimes, too, I share what I’ve written with friends and this often leads to fun discussions where I get to learn what they think on the same topics.

And so I thought that maintaining a personal blog could be even more enjoyable and would not be a big deal.

What I’ve found, however, is that because of my work as a criminal defense attorney, I’m not as willing to keep up a personal blog. It’s enough to provide fodder for prosecutors, judges and potential jurors through my specific thoughts on criminal justice — or the lack thereof — and the criminal legal system — or the lack thereof — on my law blogs. I don’t need to add into the mix that someone may not appreciate some of my more generalized thoughts on life.

Still, I live in an area — Fresno County, California — where I find it difficult to meet people whose company I enjoy. All of us like to occasionally hang out with people with whom we don’t perpetually need to defend our world-view, or justify our most basic thoughts about “the good life.” Blogging is something that I discovered, years ago, opened up the possibility of having discussions with a range of people, some of whom disagree with me, to be sure, but many of whom don’t.

At Unspun#&8482;, for example, I wrote about social and political issues. I largely stopped after becoming an attorney. I miss the community of commenters I encountered there, both the good (people who are still friends to this day) and the not-so-good (people like “Nat” who could not conduct a discussion without personal attacks). I’ve even thought frequently about resurrecting Unspun#&8482;. After all — and even though I voted for him — our current President provides much to debate and criticize (and even perhaps a few things to praise).

Another thing that has held me back from building my personal blog on this website is the thought that I may, one day, simply take this site down. The things I write — the good, the bad, the poorly-written — have some weird hold over me once written. I hate to see them go away. That’s why Unspun#&8482; remains online to this day, even though I haven’t written anything there since early 2009. So I don’t like the idea of writing here when I know I may very well just erase it all someday. (One reason I might erase it is that if I decide to practice a different kind of law, other than criminal defense, my other websites aren’t easily adaptable to that; I may need a “generic” web URL to use for a non-criminal-defense-oriented website.)

Finally, there’s the whole idea that there’s already a Rick Horowitz — and not a very pleasant one, if you ask me — who is somewhat famous, at least in some circles. I have people mistaking me for him often enough as it is. If I try to redeem the name, to connect it with less idiotic and thoughtless ideas, it could just confuse people. After all, that other Rick Horowitz has been around so long that it would be hard for people to understand if suddenly someone named “Rick Horowitz’ started to sound intelligent and sane.

So I’m not sure what’s going to happen here with this blog. At the moment, when I want to write on a more personal note, I journal offline. But the more I think about things, the more I wonder if it wouldn’t be fun to start writing about non-law things again, on occasion, and see if I can’t reconnect with some of my non-law online friends of the past.

I bought a Gateway LT2030u. It’s red and weighs about 2.5 or so pounds. It’s tiny! But the keyboard is managable, even with my hands.

I bought this one because it came with a 250 GB hard drive, 1 MB RAM and said the battery life was 7+ hours, whereas all the other comparable laptops said the battery life was about 3.75 hours.

With this configuration, this laptop is actually more powerful than the laptop I use for work!

At any rate, I should be able to do more work when away from the office, since this is so much easier to carry than even my ordinary laptop. And with the Internet access, I can do legal research, blog, and will be able to advance my book project, as well.

Can you imagine if Jack Kerouac had had one of these puppies?

You might say, I’m a happy camper. You might hear me say, “Woo-hoo!”

]]>http://rickhorowitz.com/2009/11/27/woo-hoo-new-laptop/feed/0398Nothing to Seehttp://rickhorowitz.com/2009/10/22/nothing-to-see/
http://rickhorowitz.com/2009/10/22/nothing-to-see/#respondThu, 22 Oct 2009 14:58:42 +0000http://rickhorowitz.com/?p=374Advance warning: This is essentially stream of consciousness writing. It’s unedited. If you become bored with it…well, you’ve been warned.

I went out last night and bought my first-ever copy of Writer’s Market. Other than the fact that someone told me to do it, I’m still not sure why.

I think it’s because I’d like to try to become a writer.

In one sense, I’ve always been a writer. As a young child, I wrote stories about Snoopy and the Red Baron. The Red Baron’s appearances in my stories were primarily limited to his being shot down in flames. But Snoopy! That dog could drink! (As a child, I don’t know what I thought he drank, but he was forever partying when not shooting down the Red Baron.) Sadly, the last time I saw my bundle of stories I had stuck them under the seat of our Rambler station wagon on one of our cross-country moves. I don’t know what ever happened to them after that.

The first “publication” that I know of came when I was in the eighth grade. I wrote a poem titled “My Imaginary Tree by Me.” I still remember some of the lines (heck, this might be the entire poem for all I remember):

Here the tree stands all alone,
All the kids have gone home.
See his limbs all torn and tattered,
All his leaves have far been scattered.
How he wishes he could play,
Each and every single day.
But he knows this cannot be
For he is just…

…my imaginary tree.

In addition to writing the poem, I had drawn a picture of a particularly pathetic-appearing leaveless tree. The poem was printed, superimposed over the tree, in a newsletter put out at Woodrow Wilson Jr. High School in Hanford, back in the days when education still mattered in California and schools had money for such things.

As the years went by, I wrote more poetry. A couple of specimens can be found here and here.

Despite appearances, the first of the linked poems there was not inspired by any female or any broken relationship. At the time it was written, I was yet to kiss my first girl! What happened was that I was reading a thesaurus (yes, I know) and found the phrase “a debt which cancels all others” as an alternative for “suicide.” Something about the phrase struck me and, before I knew it, I’d written this poem. Of course, I used to read a lot of Edgar Cayce back then, so I may merely have been channeling some dead poet. The second link is to a weird “poetic fragment” that popped into my head one day and I wrote it down. Yes, therapy would probably be a good idea.

I wrote a large number of other poems over the years, but I’m not sure I’ve saved many of them. Not a few were written for the first love of my life, Elizabeth Yvonne Adams, whom I married when we were both too young to know better and who left before either of us could grow up. (Primarily my fault, btw.) In fact, after she and I went our separate ways, other than whiny journal entries, I didn’t write again for a very long time. (And I don’t believe I ever wrote any more poetry.)

Yet writing, in one form or another, has stayed a big part of my life through the years. I’m loathe to state the cliché that “it’s in my blood,” but I suspect this is true: in spite of the fact that I love “having written,” the act of writing itself is usually quite difficult, painful and when I’m done I feel as if I’ve actually lost a lot of blood. Is it so strange to believe it was “in my blood” and I then bled all over the page?

For years, beginning around the time Yvonne and I separated, I kept journals. (It’s occasionally amazing to me to go back and read them. It’s like someone else’s life!) And, at least with the way I wrote them, journals can be quite painful to maintain. For one thing — this is no doubt very OCD of me — I had a “rule” that I was to avoid crossing things out or making corrections at all costs. And since I also have ADD and usually did my writing at Carl’s Jr. restaurants, this could create some of the most amazing difficulties. When I was distracted and “lost my place,” I’d come back to a partial word or sentence and think, “Now what?” But rules are rules: I had to figure a way to complete the sentence, even if I couldn’t remember what I was trying to say, in a way that did not disrupt the flow of writing.

In some ways, although I no longer adhere to it, I actually think that rule made me a better writer.

When the Internet came along, I more or less abandoned journaling. Instead, I constantly revised a personal website (winkola.com; no longer in existence, though I’ve kept the URL) that I maintained. This was before “blogging” existed — or, at least, before it was called “blogging.” But I do recall for awhile maintaining a page where I manually input entries (without titles) in chronological order. Like a journal. And when blogging software was created, I started to experiment with it, eventually starting up Unspun.

Although my blogging is different and less personal than my journals, it is difficult for me. When I maintained Unspun, I began a habit of adding incredible numbers of links to my articles, which added to the difficulty of writing. On the legal blogs I own today — Fresno Criminal Defense and Probable Cause: The Legal Blog with the Really Low Standard of Review — I probably don’t link as much as I did with Unspun, but I still usually do quite a bit of research (and citation).

In addition, I do quite a bit of legal writing, not only for my own clients, but for other attorneys.

In spite of all this writing, I have only a few publication credits. One (long lost) is for a marketing article I wrote for medical transcriptionists that appeared in MT Monthly. Another — of which I’m fairly proud because of the analogy I employed and because I tuckerized numerous family and friends (although until being introduced to Susan Krinard I didn’t know it was called “tuckerization”) — was a chapter for a book on Migrating from NT 4 to Windows 2000. Then there are a few op-ed pieces in the local newspaper and one blog article which Fresno’s Community Alliance kindly asked permission to reprint in their paper. (I can’t remember if it was this one, or this one, or some other one.)

As I’ve come to understand myself more, I realize that I have a number of weaknesses that make a “regular job” no fun at all. Not even where I’m “self-employed.” On the other hand, most of those very same weaknesses would probably work well for writing. And I do have more than a few story ideas I’d like to explore. So after talking with an actual writer, I think it’s time for me to stop pretending, dabbling, or whatever we should call it, and try to approach writing more seriously.

But note that I said “most of” my weaknesses might benefit me as a writer. One has kept me from actually attempting this before: I’m not the most self-disciplined person in the world. (And there’s that danged ADD issue.) I can do pretty well focusing on something for “awhile,” but then I tend to not do as well with following through. And, apparently, “real writers” write daily.

My problem is that I tend to write only when I feel like I have something worth saying. Which isn’t daily. Sometimes not even weekly. Not a few people will probably say I never have anything worth saying! But I’m going to ignore those people.

In fact, for at least a little while, I’m going to ignore myself when I say such things. From what I’m told, the trick is to sit down and write. If you don’t feel like you have anything to say, you write anyway. (I’ve even been told, “Just write that you don’t feel like you have anything to say and go from there.”)

You can blame this blog entry on my first attempt to adopt that attitude. Starting now, starting here, I’m going to force myself to write something every day, even if it’s only to write that I have nothing to write.

If you don’t like it, blame Susan Krinard. Or, better yet, just move along. There’s nothing here to see anyway.

]]>http://rickhorowitz.com/2009/10/22/nothing-to-see/feed/0374Angst & One Lawyer's Personal Bloghttp://rickhorowitz.com/2009/09/21/maintaining-a-personal-blog/
http://rickhorowitz.com/2009/09/21/maintaining-a-personal-blog/#commentsTue, 22 Sep 2009 00:36:02 +0000http://rickhorowitz.com/?p=361Maintaining a “personal” blog has been an ongoing source of angst for me. I (mostly) enjoy writing. I’ve intermittently kept journals for years, although not-so-much in the last 10 years; my journaling these days is spotty, at best, and for reasons similar to those I anguish over regarding maintaining a personal blog.

In one sense — at least so it seems to me — all blogging is personal. To the extent that it’s written by individuals who are expressing their opinions, how can it really be otherwise? But the blogs I maintain for my Fresno-based criminal defense practice and my more generalized criminal-law-oriented blog, can be considered “less” personal in that they primarily deal with legal issues relating to the practice of criminal law.

In “the old days,” I maintained a blog called Unspun, which was more personal, but mostly contained political and social writing. I started that blog in the dark ages of the slide to hell that was introduced to television news by Fox. Bill O’Reilly liked to fantasize that his post-modern attempt at dismantling the United States was actually a “no spin zone.” Of course, O’Reilly is nothing but spin. So, in reaction against that, I decided to create a website where, I hoped, things would be unspun. And I researched most of the articles I wrote for that site fairly thoroughly.

I always felt odd about posting more personal articles on Unspun, or articles relating to non-political/non-social issues, such as my musings on anthropology, cognitive science, or other topics that did not fit my “vision” for Unspun.

My name is common enough that several other well-known people carry it themselves. At least one can probably be considered “fairly famous.” And this, I felt, created a problem for me in writing a blog under my own name. I didn’t want to be equated with the more famous dude, primarily because he seems to me to be something of an idiot. And a hypocritical sell-out.

Network Solutions, like the great dope domain pusher that it is, recognized long ago that I had a penchant for registering domain names, even if I didn’t yet know what I’d use them for — or that I would use them at all! Consequently, I was always getting these tempting offers: “Register RICKHOROWITZ.COM now! This is your last chance before your nose falls off! Get it before someone else does, maybe even that idiot who shares your name is and is more famous!” Okay, so they didn’t actually say he was more famous.

(Here’s a spot of irony for you: I own several domain names I haven’t fully decided what to do with, including some I’ve used extensively in the past, such as techstop.com, and some I’ve more recently acquired such as MrConstitution.com, which has never really been put to use yet. But in “the old days” of the commercial Internet Service Providers, circa 1993, two of which I worked for, I remember sitting around with fellow geekazoids and laughing at someone who had just bought some “stupid” domain name like “furniture.com” or something like that. Boy! Did I miss that boat! Back then, you could buy domains, if I’m recalling correctly, for a one-time fee of $50. I remember hearing once that the guy who bought lawyers.com for $50 later sold it for a couple of million. (I don’t know if that’s true; it’s what I’d heard. Lawyers.com is today owned by the same people who torture attorneys with Lexis-Nexis products.))

Anyway, as regards the tempting offers from Network Solutions regarding a domain with my own name, eventually, I caved in. You can only wave junk in front of a junkie for so long before you get him, after all. Everyone knows when it comes to the Internet, resistance is futile. And the sooner you give in, the sooner your blog content will be disseminated.

But I am an attorney by trade (primarily, and so far it is a trap from which there seems to be no escape). This creates a problem in maintaining a “personal” blog. It’s not just a legal matter, what with freedom of speech being actually dead for attorneys as far as some courts are concerned. It’s also a political matter: if you blog “the wrong stuff” you can scare off potential clients, alienate jurors who ignore the judge’s instructions and hunt for and read your blogs during trial and perhaps even cause your colleagues to question your sanity. Though I’m not sure I really give much of a hoot about what my colleagues might think.

I can’t say that I’ve actually made a decision about the best way to handle this dilemma. Blogging is easier than journaling. And I do enjoy the occasional conversation it generates: one of the drawbacks of being a private attorney — a “solo” — is, well, having to be solo so often.

So while I’m trying to figure this one out, I guess I’m just going to have to try to exercise a little care in what I say here on my “personal” (but very public) blog. And hope that people visiting the site will recognize that there is a difference between whatever personal views I may express on this site and the way I conduct myself as a private attorney and business person.

]]>http://rickhorowitz.com/2009/09/21/maintaining-a-personal-blog/feed/1361Happy 51st Birthday To Mehttp://rickhorowitz.com/2009/07/30/happy-51st-birthday-to-me/
http://rickhorowitz.com/2009/07/30/happy-51st-birthday-to-me/#commentsFri, 31 Jul 2009 06:48:07 +0000http://rickhorowitz.com/?p=344By the time this post is published, I will be less than a few hours away from being more than a half-century old.

I’m not usually one to pay much attention to birthdays. But this one seems special for at least this reason: I’m exactly 30 years older than I — and probably most of the people who knew me — expected I’d ever be.

This has caused me to spend a good deal of today thinking about my life: where I’ve been (to the extent my Swineheimer’s permits remembering), where I am, and where I might go from here. When I think about the great achievements of my life, from my first “published” poem in the eighth grade to the publication of a book by a Microsoft employee for which I wrote one chapter in 2000; from the time my brother and I won an award in a city-wide talent show for singing “Candy Man” to my cover of “Brandi” (originally by Looking Glass, more recently the Red Hot Chili Peppers) done just a couple hours ago; from fingerpainting “pictures” in kindergarten to seeing my first publication of pictures in the Fresno Bee (Friday, July 31, 2009, an insert called “Talk” in the South Valley Edition); from being possibly the only person in America to have to repeat pre-school (it really wasn’t my fault) to graduating third out of 56 in my law school class — which, incidentally, kicked off the official recognition of my move from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) to Career Deficit Disorder (CDD) in 2006 — I’m underwhelmed.

I really thought I’d have done something with my life by now.

Where I am right now is not a place I’m exactly tickled pink to be. I’m a lawyer. A criminal defense lawyer. And I’m not sure exactly why I ever chose to do that, except that maybe it’s because everyone in my family always hated lawyers. That seems kind of like a silly reason to become a lawyer. And, since I’m going to be honest about things here, I don’t particularly like being a lawyer. Fortunately for me, everyone in my family also hates psychotherapists, so I’ve got at least one more career ahead of me.

My family claims not to dislike writers. This is a real bummer. Because the one thing I’ve been told that I’m really good at is writing. Maybe as I embark on the second half-century of my life, I’ll take a crack at writing something a little more significant than a blog, or two, or three, or — yes, I believe I have — four (not counting the photoblog). As some of my closer friends know, I have at least that many story ideas in my head; none of which could possibly be less than a novel. I do have an imagination!

I don’t actually know how to write a novel, mind you. But, as noted, I’ve done a few blogs. And I once read about a guy who had written so many blog articles he was able to put them together into a book. Now there’s a novel idea for you! I’ve also done some short stories, although none have yet been published.